By Mike Hipple, PRC-Saltillo Ambassador
When I was in school, most of the time I was working in a regular education classroom, so I didn't have time to work on life skills. So during the summer, my parents and school team wanted me to learn all of the important life skills. My school aide trained my summer helper on how to educate me on how to ride the city bus with me and how to work with me in the community, so they knew what to work on. When I rode the city bus, I needed to tell the driver where I wanted to get off at and park my power chair in the area for people who use a wheelchair or a power chair. Sometimes this took me two or three tries to get it right. We would love to go to the downtown area and of course to the mall, when I was a teenager :). Other things that I worked on were telling time, teaching me safety skills including how to drive my power chair and walking across the street, and communicating my needs to people who would be working with me. During the school year, I couldn't work on these things because I was learning math, science, health, language arts, and geography/history/social studies, but during the summer I could take some time to learn life skills. I hope to see more and more students who are using AAC in regular education, they will need to learn life skills too.
So please consider teaching these important life skills in a fun way. If you need help, please connect with me. I am Wishing everyone an amazing summer with life skills learning and making it fun!
If you want to know more about Mike, visit his ambassador page at https://aaclanguagelab.com/ambassadors/mike-hipple
Communicators In Action